Джонатан Келлерман - Night Moves

“Please tell me it’s someone with a record,” said Milo.

“Nothing violent and let’s face it, we have no idea how long the print’s been there, for all we know she was a housecleaner. But so far, we can’t locate her, which makes my nose itch. In a perfect world, she’s what your doctor guessed — the new girlfriend. You want the basics on her?”

“I want everything on her. I’m driving, how about texting or emailing?”

“High-tech transfer of data,” said Ahearn. “My college kid thinks I’m a dinosaur. The other five do, also. Sure, coming your way.”

Milo handed me his cellphone. The info arrived just as we reached La Brea and headed south.

Trisha Stacy Bowker, forty-three, had a record beginning at age nineteen and stretching sixteen years. Convictions in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Missouri for petty theft, grand theft, larceny, embezzlement, illegal appropriation of property, and fraud. She’d gone years at a time without being arrested, pled out most of the time in return for probation or minimal jail time.

Bowker’s last bust — identity theft in St. Louis — had earned her a year of probation. No violations for eight months had terminated her supervision after six months.

I re-read the record. “She’s been free and off the radar since a year before Jackie Mearsheim disappeared. Maybe she’s kept her nose clean because she hooked up with a smarter criminal.”

“Jackie’s dead, Donna’s dead, Bowker seduces Corvin but has been playing house with Mearsheim for years?”

I said, “Why not? Couple of cons working lonely hearts. They hit on a winning plan and milk it.”

“Fall for Paul, lose your money and your life. What does this princess look like?”

The mugshot photo Ahearn had sent was tiny and indistinct even under enlargement. Caucasian face topped by a thick dark mop of hair. Twenty-seven at the time.

A red light at La Brea and Beverly gave Milo a chance to examine the image.

“Damn this is small.” He put on reading glasses, squinted. “Looks like... five-five, hundred and twenty-eight. Brunette with a normal build. Could be.”

“If Bowker is Mearsheim’s girl, there was no abduction at the Sahara. All we really have on that is Sarabeth Sarser’s description. But she was scared and meth-addled, so maybe what she really saw was two people hurrying off together.”

“Or,” he said, “she saw things clearly and Mearsheim decided to upgrade his hardware.”

“Bowker’s gone, too?” I said.

“Guy like that, women are expendable, why not?”

He drummed the steering wheel with both thumbs. Sitting tall, now, green eyes ignited. “Got a lot to do. Starting with checking out ol’ Trisha on a normal-sized screen. Then I start playing keyboard Sherlock.”

A larger image of Trisha Bowker brought no new wisdom.

Her face fluctuated between barely pretty and plain, depending on her mood at arrest. Some shots showed her as various versions of blond. Flat, dark eyes. No identifying scars or tattoos.

Jane Average. That could be an advantage.

Al Ahearn’s failure to find any recent data on Bowker didn’t stop Milo from trying. No success.

He printed what Ahearn had sent him, included it in the murder book, went to get septic coffee from the big detective room. He returned, cell in one hand, coffee in the other, squeezed back into his chair, drinking and saying, “Why do I subject myself to swill? Reed’s not answering. I hope he kept it simple on the drive-by.”

Four sips later, Reed was knocking on the doorway jamb, shirt seams strained by musculature, ruddy and towheaded, your basic Viking raider.

“Phone ran out of juice, L.T., sorry. The house is small, oldish, in an area that’s mostly apartment buildings. For the Palisades, I’d have to say a dump. None of the vehicles we’re looking for were visible but there is an attached double garage. You wanted it simple so I only went back and forth twice, can’t tell you if anyone’s inside but there was no mail pile. So what’s the plan?”

“Don’t have one yet,” said Milo. “Other than I’m aiming for tonight.”

“I’ll stick around.”

“With lunch at four, take along snacks, Moses. We don’t want you fading.”

Reed smiled and flexed thigh-sized biceps. “No prob with nutrition, L.T. Been altering my workout, heavier weights, fewer reps, a little creatine. Also, I watch everything that goes into my mouth.”

“What was lunch?”

“Four cans of Muscle Milk.”

“I don’t even want to know what that is.”

“It actually tastes pretty good. Chocolate.”

“Would it matter if it didn’t?”

“Nope. I’ll be at my desk, let me know.”

Too late to call the school board for info on Donna Weyland. Milo tapped into county property tax records, found nothing, which fit her being a renter.

With no info on her origins, impossible to look for family.

He said, “All else fails, dig up what you have. Seven years ago, Jackie gets disappeared by Mearsheim in Santa Barbara, maybe he was already with Trisha Bowker, maybe not. Either way, with Jackie taken care of, Mearsheim looks for another victim, possibly finds one or more before he latches onto Donna. So what’s Bowker’s role in all this?”

I said, “Could be anything from confidante to full partner. If they’re working as a team, she could’ve been used as a lure. Two women just happen to meet, become friendly, one lets on she’s single and lonely, the other says, ‘I know a good guy.’ ”

“With a nice job in the school district, like Jackie. Two districts hired him, can you believe that?”

“Maybe he did his job acceptably. Some sort of technical work with minimal supervision. It does show he’s bright. Anyway, whether or not there were male victims prior to Chet, Bowker was used to seduce him. He would’ve seemed the perfect target: Mearsheim had come to despise him for the way Chet treated him and he understood Chet’s overconfidence the way we did: vulnerability.”

He shook his head. “Idiot’s unable to imagine any woman who says she loves him doesn’t mean it. Bowker’s on him like a tracking device.”

“Passion, dinner, and jewelry. Maybe they had bigger plans but Chet balked. So they killed him.”

He let out a sour laugh. “Wages of sin 101. Okay, on to real estate.”

The rented house on Evada Lane was deeded to a limited liability corporation registered as Scribble Properties. A bit of digging revealed that to be three people, two living in Seattle, one in Austin, Texas.

Bernard Leviton, Gray Winograd, Susan Minelli. Three separate social network pages but one story: a trio of TV writers, alumni of a long-running late-night show, had pooled resources by renting out their L.A. homes to leverage several Section Eight apartment buildings downtown. That in place, they moved to states with no local income tax.

Evada Lane had been Susan Minelli’s residence so Milo began with her.

Voicemail; same for Bernard Leviton in Seattle. The converted Texan, Gray Winograd, wasn’t home but his wife was.

“This is Meryl. The po-lice?” Bored voice, syllables elongated as if to prolong conversation.

Milo said, “This is about the property on Evada Lane.”

Meryl Winograd said, “That place? Something happened? What?”

“We’re doing a routine investigation.”

“That sounds like movie dialogue. What did you say your name was?”

Milo repeated his credentials.

“Hold on... I just looked you up and you seem to be the real deal. What’s your actual police phone number so I can make sure?”

Milo told her.

She said, “You sound mellow, guess I’ll believe you. So what do you want to know about that place?”